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Investigating Boobslang
DIANA LOOSER
NZWORDS
OCTOBER 1999
VOLUME 2 NUMBER 2
PUBLISHED TWICE A YEAR
EDITORIAL
After a feature on New Zealand law in our
previous issue our major article here
focuses by contrast on the rather less
formal usage of those locked up for
transgressions
of
the
law.
The
prison population constitutes a readily
identifiable subculture whose distinctive
argot has long interested linguists and
dictionary-makers.
Our intrepid reporter Diana Looser is
rapidly becoming the leading expert on
Kiwi ‘boobslang’. Her face-to-face
interviews
with
a
wide
variety
of inmates in a number of different
institutions
are
yielding
valuable
sociolinguistic and lexicographical data,
and the project provides a fine example of
the kind of research which the NZDC
hopes will be undertaken in other such
lexically rich environments.
Our other principal contributor in this
issue is Sheila Kolstad, an experienced
lexicographer who has been involved since
its beginnings with the Dictionary of
American Regional English (DARE), an
ambitious and still unfinished project
whose long gestation and meticulous
preparation have echoes of both the OED
and our own DNZE.
Sheila’s article and her recent keen
interest in NZE have created a link
between the States and New Zealand which
is likely to be of real benefit to the
international profile of the NZDC.
Tony Deverson
Editor, NZWords
Associate Director,
NZDC
Boobslang (from boob ‘prison’), also known
as boob jargon, is a type of argot used amongst
prison inmates, defined by Greg Newbold in
The Big Huey as ‘the jargon of the jail’. He
adds, ‘Many of the terms involved in this
language are specific only to prisons and
criminal subcultures and will be unfamiliar to
the person on the street’. A language of the
underworld (initially known as ‘cant’)
originated in England during the 16th
century and has long been noted as a
characteristic of criminals and criminal
subcultures—the language of pirates, beggars,
highwaymen, convicts and, during the 19th
century with the construction of what we
know as the modern prison, prison inmates.
The words and expressions which
comprise boobslang have accumulated over a
number of decades from a variety of sources
and are constantly being added to. This
provides inmates with a colourful and varied
vocabulary which may be used within the jail
environment: to refer succinctly to everyday
objects and persons; to convey emotions,
beliefs and attitudes and to indicate solidarity
networks and identities; as a ‘secret code’;
and as a way of maintaining the complex
systemic relations extant in the prison society.
The usage of boobslang among inmates is
dependent upon certain variables, being used
slightly differently according to age, ethnic
identity, crime, location and gender of the
inmate.
During 1998 I carried out research into
the vocabulary and functions of the
‘boobslang’ used by inmates at Paparua
(Christchurch Men’s) Prison. This was an
extension of two previous studies carried out
in Canterbury prisons: Rolleston Men’s Prison
in 1996 and Christchurch Women’s Prison in
1997. So far my research has collected about
1600 terms and their usages. Space will not
allow a discussion of all these terms, but this
article will describe of a number of terms
which fall into various subject categories. The
aim is to provide an insight into the nature of
the colourful language used by prisoners at
Paparua.
BOOBSLANG TOPICS
Boobslang words may be roughly grouped
into seven main semantic categories which
would appear to reflect main areas of interest
or concern regarding inmates’ well-being
or goals or significant things in their lives.
These are terms for: places and procedures;
figures of authority; crimes and sentences;
inmate types and their relationships; business
activities; gang-related terms; and drug
terminology.
A good example from the first category—
THE NEW ZEALAND
DICTIONARY CENTRE
A joint project between VICTORIA UNIVERSITY OF
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places and procedures—is boob itself,
meaning prison. As has been seen in the case
of boobslang, boob can prefix many words,
for example, boobgear for prison clothing;
boob issue for an issue of toiletries; boob gun
for a tattoo machine; boob glove for a
characteristic prison tattoo giving the
impression that the person is wearing a
fingerless glove; and boobhead, a chronic
recidivist, or one who prefers to be in jail
rather than on the Outside. Other terms for
places and procedures include big bird for a
transfer to another prison by aeroplane, fish
bowl or fish tank for the Control Room, work
parade, which refers to the ordered positions
in which inmates line up before starting work
in the morning, and Bahamas for the pound
(solitary confinement cell). Watching sky is
another interesting term for being in the
pound; this refers humorously to the view of
the sky as seen through the mesh top of the
solitary confinement cell, which is contrasted
with being able to watch the Sky television
channels. As there is no television in the cell,
‘sky’ is the only thing an inmate can watch.
The boobslang vocabulary also includes
terms for authority figures. Although better
known terms such as pig, filth, and heat are
common, five-o is also used to describe a
police officer; and headlice is also used by
some to refer to the police (from ‘po-LICE’).
A prison psychiatrist is known as a trick cyclist
or the google factory. Prison guards are
generally referred to by the widely known
term screw, but, interestingly, there are more
terms for those officers who are either new to
the prison or have just finished training, such
as baby screw, schoolboy screw, prospect, new
on the floor, rookie and scobie. The latter
term is a blend of letters from two words:
screw for prison guard, and probie, a white
gang prospect still in training.
Boobslang also comprises a great many
words and expressions to do with crimes and
sentences. Lag is a general term used to refer
to a sentence or to an inmate. Examples are
big lag (life sentence or preventive
detention), a wicked lag (any sentence over
seven years, life, or preventive detention), and
a bed-and-breakfast lag (a very short
sentence). To knock your lag out is to serve
your time in prison. Inmate terms include old
lag, old lagger (someone who has been in and
out of prison for years), and baby lagger or
first lagger (someone serving their first prison
term—usually a short one). A long sentence
may be called the big Huey (Long), in
reference to Governor Huey Long of
Louisiana, notorious for his harsh sentences,
and a life sentence may be referred to as
doing the lot, all up, or the bitch. Preventive
1
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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
detention can be black bitch because, as one
inmate explained, ‘there’s no light at the end
of the tunnel’. Words for crimes include armo
for an armed robbery, tank for a burglary
involving a safe (presumably from the usage
of tank, which refers simply to a safe), and
code R and sour grape (rape). Terms for
weapons are also frequent, including iron
(firearm) and shiv (a stabbing weapon,
especially one which can be broken off to
leave the object inside the victim, for
example, those made from glass or Perspex)
The makeup and structure of the inmate
society are of central interest. Therefore,
there are many words for types of inmate
(decided either by personality, reputation, or
criminal offence) and relationships between
inmates. There are words for people who have
respect, for example boss (someone who has
respect but is not gang affiliated) and king pin
(leader who has gained his position either
from intimidation or from being in control,
solving the problems), and for those who do
not have respect, such as a frip, defined by
one inmate as ‘anyone you don’t regard in the
same class as you, especially someone who
hasn’t done a lot of jail’.
INMATE SOLIDARITY
A very important aspect of inmate
relations is solidarity. A person who breaks
this by narking (informing to the authorities)
risks serious reprisals. Once labelled a nark or
a finger the person is branded and cannot
escape this reputation even if he or she
relocates to another prison. Another seriously
regarded offence is tealeafing (stealing from
another inmate while in prison). A
tealeaf(er), if caught, is dealt with harshly and
may be kangaroo courted (subject to an
unofficial judgment and punishment by other
inmates). The most despised group of
inmates in the prison are child molesters,
known by a variety of labels, including freaks,
nonces, boofheads, Lesters, rock spiders,
mullocks and K.F.s. Much labelling is also
done on the grounds of ethnic identity, so
terms such as flour bin (a Pakeha), Bruce (an
Asian—from Bruce Lee) and T.H. Lowry (a
Maori) are in use.
Another boobslang category is concerned
with terms relating to business activities.
These ‘business activities’ generally involve
trade among inmates in the prison and the
movement of contraband between the prison
and Outside. There are terms for money: bat
for a hundred-dollar note, a brick and
bluebird chips for a ten-dollar note, lettuce
for a twenty and tomato for a hundred-dollar
note. A cockatoo is someone who keeps peg
(keeps watch) for someone else, for example,
in a fight, when doing drugs or tattooing. To
charge something is to insert contraband into
one’s rectum to hide and transport it, as
opposed to cheeking, where contraband is not
actually inserted, yet is held between the
cheeks of one’s bottom.
The final two categories—gang-related
terminology, and words pertaining to drugs
and drug-usage—differ slightly from the
Page 2
others in that they are largely ‘importational
models’. This means that, although many of
these terms may be spawned within the prison
environment, or widely used within it, they
refer to actions and interests of criminal
subcultures outside the prison (i.e. gangs and
drug-users) and have their ultimate origin
and influence from these exterior groups.
These terms are also more likely to be used on
the Outside within these groups.
GANG TERMS
Gang affiliations give rise to terms such as
dog for a member of the Mongrel Mob Gang.
From this, the term kennel is coined for
a Mongrel Mob member’s cell—literally, in
both cases, a house (cell) for a dog. As many
gangs are set up on ethnic lines, with their
ideology informed by racial prejudice, terms
used for gang members tend to be racist in
character or to describe racial aspects of other
gangs. Usually, a gang trainee for a ‘black’
gang is a prospect, whereas a gang trainee for
a ‘white’ gang is a probie. More descriptive
terms such as light bulb heads, cue balls, nude
nuts, bumpheads, pin heads and chrome
domes derive from satiric attitudes to
Skinheads; to go ten skin bowling is a term
meaning to beat up Skinheads. The term Oh
One for a Skinhead has an interesting
derivation: it comes from their characteristic
expression ‘Oi Oi’ used as a greeting. When
written in capitals OI OI (for example, as in
the case of tattoos) it looks like the numerals
‘zero one’, or ‘oh one’. At a deeper level, a
member may swear on their gang, for
example, using the words, Straight up on Oi,
or Straight up on the Mob. This implies an
absolute word of honour, ‘like swearing on
your mother’s grave’.
A large number of the terms gathered
from the prison were to do with drugs and
devices and ways of taking them. There are
many examples, but some interesting ones
include: blue lady (a glass syringe); blue
lagoon (halcyon prepared in a solution for
intravenous injection; in the syringe it is a
blue liquid); bones (temgesics, originally
called Ts, then T-Bones, then just bones);
elbow (a pound of marijuana, from ‘lb’ (elbie) for pound); johnny dip (LSD—rhyming
slang for ‘trip’); Mr Miggles (heroin); opals
(100mg morphine sulphate tablets—because
they are pearly grey); rub-a-dub (used
occasionally to refer to ascetic anhydride, an
agent added to Class B drugs, for example,
morphine, to turn them into Class A drugs,
for example, heroin); and skunk (weed)
(marijuana of very high quality).
VARIED ORIGINS
As with many vocabularies, boobslang does
not originate from a single source. Because of
the gradual accumulation of terms over
several years from different people with
different backgrounds, for different objects
and procedures and for different reasons,
these terms have an extensive variety of
origins. Boobslang terms may originate from
variants of pre-existing words, or may come
into being as a result of outside (even
international) sources and influences—
hence, there is an element of intertextuality
in the manufacture of prison slang terms.
Some changes include acronyms, taken
either from current English or from
boobslang. Examples include: B&B, which
stands for brace and bit, rhyming slang for fit,
drug-users’ slang for a hypodermic syringe
and needle; D.I.C. (Dick in Child—a
corruption of Drunk in Charge) for a child
molestation offence: ‘he’s in for being caught
D.I.C.’; K.F. for Kid(die) Fucker, a
paedophile; K.P. for King Pin, a leader who
has gained his position from violence, or from
being the one in control, the one who solves
any problems; and occasionally for Kackle
Pants, a satiric derivative of King Pin, an
inmate who thinks he is in control when he is
not; S.N.U. from Special Needs Unit, for
mentally unbalanced or potentially suicidal
inmates, and from this S.N.U. material, a mad
or deranged person.
RHYMING SLANG
A significant proportion of boobslang
terms, especially those used by older inmates
with past prison experience, has rhyming
slang origins. The commonest form of this is
Cockney rhyming slang, which began as a
lower-class London dialect, and is also found
in other institutions such as military camps.
Because of its inventive language play,
rhyming slang was opaque to outsiders
and was consequently adopted by criminal
subcultures who added their own terms,
thus producing an easily expanded ‘secret’
language. There are many examples of
rhyming slang in use at Paparua: Al Capone,
dog and bone, and eau de cologne for the
telephone, Billy Lid for a kid (child), Bugs
Bunny for funny, or money, china plate for
one’s friend or mate, currant cake for awake
(aware, informed), Egna Brit for shit, frog and
toad for a road, hairy ape for rape, rub-a-dub
for the pub, pig’s ear for a beer, T.H. Lowry
for Maori, and turtledove for ‘in love’
(turtledoves are a traditional symbol of
fidelity). There are also terms specific to the
prison situation such as Noah’s ark for a nark
(informer), lost and found for the pound
(solitary confinement punishment cell) and
four-by-two for a screw (prison guard,
warden).
One of the greatest influences upon
prison slang, however, is the influence of
mainstream popular culture. The influence of
film, television, radio, and the mass market
has had a profound impact upon the new
terms that are generated in the prison
environment. Sporting stars, for example
champion 100-metre sprinter Carl Lewis and
baseball star Babe Ruth, are represented by
such terms as (do a) Carl Lewis (to run away,
make an escape) and Babe Ruth (the truth).
Cartoon characters such as Warner Brothers’
Bugs Bunny (see above ‘funny’, ‘money’)
appear, as well as Mutley (aviator ‘baddie’
Dick Dastardly’s green dog in the 1960s
Hanna Barbera cartoon Stop the Pigeon) for a
police sniffer dog which searches the prison
for drugs; and Captain Caveman (a character
CONTINUED ON PAGE 3
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NZWORDS
OCTOBER 1999
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Page 3
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 2
from the cartoon The Flintstones) for an inmate
who always remains in his cell, or cave.
It is also interesting to note that New
Zealand prison slang has the added influence
of the Maori language. Boobslang terms of
Maori origin include whare for a cell (lit.
‘house’ – a cell is also referred to as one’s
house), henake for the pound, solitary
confinement (lit. ‘eeltrap’), uma rapiti,
meaning to escape or run away (lit. ‘run
rabbit’) and hemmel [sic], a written form of
the Maori word hemo (dead, in a coma).
N E W
Boobslang is a fascinating form of
language which perceptively reflects the
tensions and complications of being in prison
and the areas of interest and group goals of
the prison inmates. Boobslang displays the
inmates’ cynical attitude towards their
surroundings and situation, but is also a keen
illustration of the piquant sense of humour
and wry intelligence shared by many of these
people. Prison language serves emotional,
social, and practical purposes, helping
inmates to accommodate to the prison
F R O M
A Dictionary of Modern
New Zealand Slang
environment, by giving them a system with
which to refer to places, procedures and
people around them, and helping them to
define their own place within that
environment. Boobslang has a life, colour,
and personality of its own and makes
intriguing research.
Diana Looser is a doctoral student and tutor in
the English Department at the University of
Canterbury.
O X F O R D
New Zealand Oxford
Minidictionary
The Dictionary of
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Editied by Harry Orsman
Edited by Tony Deverson
Edited by H.W. Orsman
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the distinctive informal language used by
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this larger work. It gives frequent examples
to illustrate use and meaning, and provides
dates for the first use of each word.
Informative and amusing, it draws on a
wide range of Kiwi words and phrases.
This is the newest—and smallest—
member of the Oxford family of New
Zealand dictionaries. It is written for
those who need a compact guide to the
spelling and meaning of words in the
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small format, the dictionary includes a
wide range of distinctive New Zealand
and Australian words and phrases, along
with an up-to-date coverage of the
general, internationally-shared English
vocabulary.
The Dictionary of New Zealand English
provides a unique historical record of
New Zealand words and phrases from
their earliest use to the present day. Its
6,000 main headword entries and 9,300
separate subentries provide fascinating
insights into New Zealand’s diverse
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NZWORDS
OCTOBER 1999
NZWords October 99 FINAL
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FROM
THE
CENTRE
Page 4
The New Zealand Dictionary
Centre is jointly funded by Oxford
University Press and Victoria
University of Wellington to
research all aspects of New
Zealand English and to publish
New Zealand dictionaries and
other works.
Graeme Kennedy, Director
New Zealand Dictionary Centre
For much of the last few months the New
Zealand Dictionary Centre has been engaged
in establishing electronic databases of New
Zealand English, and most especially of the
words and phrases collected by Harry Orsman
over almost half of the present century. These
databases, including an electronic version of
Dr Orsman’s Dictionary of New Zealand English,
can now be rapidly accessed and searched
by computer. With access to impressive
dictionary databases such as those at Oxford
and at the Australian National Dictionary
Centre in Canberra we are able to check for
evidence on the origins and history of words
used in New Zealand and on new forms and
distinctive meanings which have emerged
here. We are very grateful for the support of
John Simpson, editor of the Oxford English
Dictionary, and Bruce Moore, Director of the
Australian Dictionary Centre, and of their
staff in cooperating so generously with us.
The Centre has begun to build up its
database of previously unrecorded words of
New Zealand English and recently advertised
research fellowships to encourage full-time
study for persons interested in undertaking
research in New Zealand lexicography. I am
delighted to be able to announce that from a
strong field of applicants Dianne Bardsley of
Hawera and John Macalister of Featherston
have been appointed as the first research
fellows at the Centre.
Ms Bardsley will be undertaking a project to
identify aspects of the contribution made by
rural New Zealand to the New Zealand English
lexicon. She has taught English at Hawera
High School since 1982 and her long-standing
interest in New Zealand English has resulted in
a number of publications including works on
English in New Zealand during the Depression
and World War 2.
John Macalister has recently completed an
MA in Applied Linguistics at Victoria
University of Wellington and plans to work
during his tenure of the Fellowship on the
ways in which Maori has contributed to the
development of New Zealand English. Mr
Macalister has taught English in Kiribati,
Namibia, Thailand, and Cambodia, as well as
New Zealand, and most recently, during his
MA studies, compared the use of words of
Maori origin in the School Journals of the
1960s with those of the 1990s.
There are clearly many areas of New
Zealand life in which the distinctive words used
here have yet to be recorded. This was superbly
illustrated in NZWords 2.1, where Jim Cameron’s
informative article showed how the practice of
PAGE 4
the law has left its trace in the variety of English
spoken in New Zealand. Almost certainly there
are many words used in domestic contexts
which have yet to be captured in our
dictionaries (remember copper sticks, made of
wood, of course), and then there are the words
used first or with distinctive meanings by such
diverse groups as missionaries and miners,
farmers and freezing workers, soldiers,
sportsmen and sportswomen, trampers and
teachers, and many other professions and
trades.
INCOMINGS TO THE CENTRE
Words or meanings which are found to be
specifically ‘New Zealand’ in origin or use are
added to our ‘incomings’ database. Readers
are invited to send us any words and phrases
used in New Zealand which they think may have
their origin, or distinctively different uses here,
and which do not appear in current
dictionaries. The
Centre’s ‘incomings
template’ form on which such words and
phrases are recorded before being entered into
the database is provided in the brochure
enclosed with this issue of NZWords to help
interested readers gather useful data. You are
warmly invited to make copies of this form to
record information which you think might be
relevant, and to send your contributions to the
Centre. A website is being planned to show the
work of the Centre and it will also include a
copy of the template form.
Who’s Centric Now?
Both the Director and Associate Director of the
NZDC will be speaking at an international
conference on post-colonial Englishes titled
'Who's Centric Now?', to be held in Canberra
from 27-29 October, and hosted by the
Australian National Dictionary Centre,
Oxford University Press, and the Humanities
Research Centre at the Australian National
University.
Graeme Kennedy's paper is entitled 'The
Distribution of Maori Words in New Zealand
English', and Tony Deverson's 'New Zealand,
New Zealand English, and the Dictionaries'.
For further information or enquiries please
contact:
Leena Messina, Programs Office,
Humanities Research Centre, ANU
Phone: +61-2-6249 4357, Fax: 6248 0054
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.anu.edu.au/HRC
(Note: you can also register for the conference
at the above website).
MAILBAG
The Editor of NZWords welcomes
readers’ letters and other
contributions on their recent
observations of New Zealand
usage, both positive and negative.
Please write to:
Tony Deverson, Editor, NZWords
Department of English, University of
Canterbury Private Bag 4800, Christchurch
Fax: (03) 364 2065
Email: [email protected]
Graeme Kennedy
Director, New Zealand
Dictionary Centre
School of Linguistics and
Applied Language Studies,
Victoria University of Wellington
PO Box 600 Wellington
Email: [email protected]
Fax: (03) 463 5604
NEW ZEALAND DICTIONARY CENTRE
ADVISORY COMMITTEE
Dr Laurie Bauer
Wellington Corpus of NZ English
Mr David Crabbe
Head, School of Linguistics & Applied
Language Studies
Assoc Prof Tony Deverson
Associate Director, NZDC, University of
Canterbury
Dr Christine Franzen
Senior Lecturer, School of English,
Film & Theatre, VUW
Prof Janet Holmes
Wellington Corpus of NZ English
Dr Des Hurley
Senior Fellow, NZDC
Mr Wiremu Kaa
– Studies, VUW
Senior Lecturer, School of Maori
–
Prof T-imoti Karetu
–
Commissioner, Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Maori
Prof Graeme Kennedy
Director, NZDC
Prof David Mackay
Dean, Faculty of Humanities and Social
Sciences
Dr Bruce Moore
Director, Australian National Dictionary Centre
Mr Ray O’Farrell
Director, Education Division, OUPANZ
Prof Vincent O’Sullivan
Director, Stout Centre, VUW
Dr Harry Orsman
Senior Fellow, NZDC
Mr Marek Palka
Managing Director, OUPANZ
Mr Peter Rose
Academic Publisher, OUPANZ
Mr Richard Samson
Director, Academic Division, OUPANZ
NZWORDS
OCTOBER 1999
NZWords October 99 FINAL
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Page 5
‘Snib’ - A new Zealand word
SHEILA KOLSTAD
A written directive for a stay at a bach
belonging to friends instructed me to ‘snib’
the lock. The meaning of snib was clear from
context; the word itself was new to me and
somehow amusing. When I asked my friends
about it, they looked at me wide-eyed and
said, ‘Of course, “snib”—what else would you
say?’
The Oxford English Dictionary Second
Edition (OED2; 1989) gives snib either as noun
to mean ‘a catch or fastening for a door,
window, lock, or the like’ or as verb to mean
‘to fasten (a door, etc.) by means of a snib or
catch’. The word has an interesting history.
OED2 labels the noun ‘Chiefly Sc[ots]’ and
says it is of doubtful origin, perhaps adopted
from Low German snibbe (German schnippe),
snib (Swedish snibb) a beak, beaklike point;
the verb is simply labelled ‘orig[inally] Sc.’
Examples of usage are given from such
authors as James M. Barrie and Arthur Conan
Doyle, and range from 1825 through 1891 for
the noun and 1808 through 1971 for the verb.
Snib is to be found, of course, in the
Scottish National Dictionary (Vol. 8, 1971) and
in Webster’s Third International Dictionary
(1961). It is not in the Australian National
Dictionary (1988) nor The Macquarie Dictionary
of Australian Colloquial Language (1988);
neither is it in the Dictionary of New Zealand
English (1997) or the earlier Heinemann New
Zealand Dictionary (1989). Spell checkers on
New Zealand computers reject snib as a word.
All of this last is a bit surprising because snib
seems to be still in broad usage only in New
Zealand.
Once common in the Scottish language,
snib has little current use among speakers in
that country. A native Scot in his mid fifties,
a student of English linguistics at the
University of Wisconsin (USA), says the word
is now only dialectal in Scots. In England the
word seems already to have been regarded
as a provincialism as early as 1917: ‘They
laughed at me in London when I talked
about “snibbing” the windows.’ (Douglas, O.
[Anna Buchan], The Setons, page xiii). A Pocket
Oxford dated 1924 does not list the word.
From Canada there is a single tantalising
1971 quote, published in The Islander
(21 November, page 2, Victoria, British
Columbia): ‘The windows were not only
unbroken but snibbed shut.’ Perhaps a relict
Scot or errant New Zealander?
Despite the numbers of Scots immigrants
who settled in the United States, snib never
became established in American usage. The
three examples I was able to find all came
from such immigrants or their children. The
first, a quote slip in the files of the Dictionary
of American Regional English (DARE), came
from an unidentified informant of Scots
background in an area of Scots settlement.
Dated 1973, it recalls usage from the early
1920s in Monongahela, Pennsylvania: ‘To set
the snib on a door lock to lock it … So you
PAGE 5
either “snibbed” or “unsnibbed” the lock ...’.
The second example, found in Prairie Winds, a
publication of the Thomas County [Kansas]
Historical Society, is from a reminiscence
written in 1993 by a woman whose parents
had moved there from Scotland about 1900.
She noted that ‘the screen door would be
snibbed on the inside to keep the flies out and
mother would be working in the kitchen.’ An
American friend of mine recognized snib
immediately. Although she does not and did
not use the term herself, she said it was a
commonplace word to her Scots parents, who
immigrated to New Jersey in the 1920s.
Although also used in the wider senses as
defined above by OED2, in New Zealand snib
has had reference especially to Yale-type locks.
This sort of lock is set into the door separately
from the door handle and latch. The key goes
in on the outside of the lock only; on the
inside there is a small handle or lever and a
button. To allow normal passage through the
door, the small handle on the lock is turned so
that the latch is no longer engaged. Then the
button is pushed up to hold the spring-loaded
latch in. The door is now ‘on the snib’. To
‘snib’ the lock, the button is pushed the other
way. This releases the latch, so that entry from
outside can be only by key. The door is
then ‘snibbed’. Because newer houses in New
Zealand have a lock built into the door
handle, all this snibbing may soon be a thing
of the past.
DIALECT SURVIVAL
Thus snib exists both as noun and as verb.
The little lever on the lock is described as the
‘snib’, and ‘snibbed’ is used to describe the
state of the lock. To ‘snib the door’ means to
set the lever to lock it; to ‘snib it open’ means
to set the lever to make it unlocked. In the
wider usage, if a door or window is ‘snibbed’,
it implies that it is fixed either in the locked or
unlocked position.
According to Elizabeth Gordon of the
Origins of New Zealand English project at
the University of Canterbury (ONZE),
dialectal words have not tended to persist in
New Zealand English beyond the first
generation of speakers in the new country.
Snib is essentially a dialect word which has
continued in general use. All those New
Zealanders aged 45 or older whom I asked
about snib know and use the word. It is also
familiar to younger New Zealanders, but less
commonly used by them. Most said as well
that they felt the word was on its way out
of the Kiwi vocabulary.
But perhaps the word will not be lost
completely. Snib does still seem to have a bit of
occasional use outside New Zealand. Several
months ago an episode of ‘Blue Heelers’, set
in a small New South Wales outback town and
produced in Australia, had one of the
characters making sure the lock was snibbed.
This suggests some continued familiarity with
the word in the West Island. And there is a
website which offers for purchase a security
screen door lock with ‘inside snib’ and a key
which ‘overrides the snib operation’. The lock
can be got from a company called ‘EPCO
Architecture Hardware (Australia) Pty. Ltd.’
located, however, in Taipei, Taiwan!
Sheila Kolstad is the Senior Science Editor of the
Dictionary of American Regional English at the
University of Madison, Wisconsin, and a frequent
visitor to New Zealand.
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NZWORDS
OCTOBER 1999
NZWords October 99 FINAL
23/5/01
11:59 PM
Page 6
YOUR LANGUAGE NEEDS YOU!
THE OED GOES ONLINE
The Oxford English Dictionary is entering a
completely new and exciting stage in its
history, which is as ground-breaking as
when James Murray, the first OED editor,
started compiling the first edition some 120
years ago. In July Oxford University Press
made an appeal for words, 'Your Language
Needs You', to all English-speakers
worldwide for a completely revised edition
of the OED which will start to appear online
in March 2000.
This appeal is the biggest in the history
of The Oxford English Dictionary. People
from all over the world are being asked to
provide OUP with brand new words and
'new old words' which are supported by
published evidence.
Brand new words can be slang or
regional, and will come from anywhere in
the world where English is spoken. They
can even be recent borrowings from other
languages. New old words, on the other
hand, are words from earlier centuries
which have so far escaped inclusion in the
Dictionary. All new words may be
submitted using a form, details of
which are available on the OED
website: www.oed.com.
John Simpson, Chief Editor,
OED, said: 'There is no
longer one English—there
are many Englishes.
Words are flooding into
the language throughout
its history, and the
developments in world
English. When the
online
edition
was
launched, I would be delighted to have a
host of new people helping us map the
past, present, and future of English.'
Readers worldwide are being asked
to look out for new words.
Cartoon: courtesy of Recorder, OUP’s Staff
Newsletter, Vol IV Issue 4, August 1999.
ADDRESS FOR ARTICLES AND LETTERS
NZWORDS COMPETITIONS
NZWORDS COMPETITION NO. 1: RESULTS
In our inaugural competition competitors
were asked to supply a TV guide-style promo
piece of 30 words or fewer for a New Zealand
literary work (fiction or non-fiction).
The small number of contributors should
be congratulated on their witty reductionism,
brought to bear on authors as widely
dispersed in time as Samuel Butler and
Elizabeth Knox.
Mary Cresswell argued for The Edmonds
Cookbook as a literary work (pot-boiler?), and
needed only seven words to suggest its recipe
for success:
Guaranteed levitation, comprehended
within a lie-flat format.
The meaning of Denis Glover’s bestknown poem was laid out in black and white
by Eric Beardsley:
Over-committed Canterbury small farmers
reduced to to poverty, nudity, insanity and
death by big business, their story
punctuated by ironic refrain (see ‘Chorus,
Greek’) from Australian immigrants.
Honourable mentions to these and others,
however the editor’s nod (and the prize of
$100) goes to Ray Copland of Christchurch,
who used the exact word-limit to capture
Mander’s The Story of a New Zealand River in
delightful parody of Listener/Skywatch style:
Pioneer Tom is clearfelling the North
Island. All-purpose wife Alice, up the wopwops and the duff, secretly adores
violin-playing David. They finally make
music when Tom falls under a truck.
NZWORDS COMPETITION NO. 2
Lexicography is mostly serious business, and
especially in today’s politically correct times
dictionary-makers make great efforts to
suppress personality and prejudice in order to
provide scientifically objective accounts of a
language’s vocabulary.
At the same time a more idiosyncratic and
attitudinal strand has always been part of the
history of English dictionary writing, from
Samuel Johnson’s notorious definitions of
words such as oats and Whig (and lexicographer
‘harmless drudge’) to our own Harry
Orsman’s wanker ‘a person given to
unproductive activity’. In America Ambrose
Bierce made a name for himself as an
‘alternative’ lexicographer. His quirky,
sardonic contributions were collected in 1911
in The Devil’s Dictionary (diplomacy ‘the
patriotic art of lying for one’s country’;
dictionary ‘a malevolent literary device for
cramping the growth of a language ...’).
For this competition readers are invited to
come up with concise definitions in this more
opinionated, subversive style for two or three
of the omnipresent trials and trappings of life
at millennium’s end: computers, television,
road rage, fast food, politicians, political
correctness, the millennium itself—or
whatever bugs you!.
First prize $100 worth and second prize $50
worth of books from the OUP catalogue.
ENTRIES CLOSE 30 DECEMBER 1999.
Entries sent by email should also contain
a snail mail address.
Tony Deverson
Editor, NZWords
Department of English
University of Canterbury
Private Bag 4800, Christchurch
Fax: (03) 364 2065
Email: [email protected]
DEADLINE FOR NEXT ISSUE: 30 December 1999
Payment: The publisher reserves the right to edit or not to
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ISSN 1440-9909
PAGE 6
NZWORDS OCTOBER 1999